Dainty's Cruel Rivals; Or, The Fatal Birthday
adding, with a sneer: "Your trouble must have turned your brain, causing
you to imagine such a ridiculous thing; and I hope you will not mention
it to any one else, for Lovelace Ellsworth was the soul of honor, I
assure you, and the last person in the world to lead an innocent young
girl into anything so disgraceful as a secret marriage."
"I know that he was very noble," faltered the poor little woman, "and I
must indeed have dreamed it if you deny that I heard such a statement.
Yet the dream was as vivid as a reality."
"Dreams often are, and this was only another instance," replied the
haughty woman, coldly, adding: "I see no use trying to find Dainty. She
went away of her own free will, and she will not communicate her
whereabouts till she chooses. With that you must rest content. As for my
part, I am free to confess that I am so indignant at her treachery to
Love that I don't care if I never see her face again!"
Mrs. Chase shrank sensitively from the angry flash of her
sister-in-law's black eyes, and returned meekly to Love's bedside to
watch the slowly sinking life and wipe the moisture from the pale brow
that Dainty had so loved to kiss, and her tortured heart prayed hourly:
"Oh, God, give back his life! Raise him up from this bed of illness,
that he may unravel the web of mystery that entangles the fate of my
lost darling!"
Mrs. Ellsworth was terribly frightened, for Sheila Kelly had promptly
told her of Dainty's declaration that she was already married to Love,
and her offer that Love would make her rich if she would set her free.
If the proud woman had felt the least pity for Dainty, it all died now
in the dread lest she should escape and rob her of the rich inheritance
that would be hers if Love died unmarried. She said to herself
resolutely that there was no help for it now. Dainty's life must be
sacrificed to the terrible exigencies of her position.
Not that Mrs. Ellsworth would have taken the girl's life with her own
white hands, or even deputed another to do so. Oh, no, no! Of course she
would not be so wicked, she told herself complacently.
But to imprison the poor girl on bread and water in a sunless dungeon,
and goad her to despair till she died of persecution, or even took her
own life--oh, that was quite another thing! thought the heartless woman,
stifling the voice of conscience in her determination to succeed in her
wicked aims.
With Sheila Kelly, as with Mrs. Chase, the mistress of Ellsworth laughed
to scorn the assertion of Dainty that she was Love Ellsworth's wife.
"She was only trying to work on your feelings--do not pay any attention
to her falsehoods," she said; and Sheila, who had half-way determined to
make capital some way out of her important secret, stupidly yielded the
point, and again became the tool of her wily mistress.
When Dainty had been imprisoned a week, Sheila visited her again, and,
as a result, hurried to her mistress with a pale, scared face,
whispering:
"I have earned the promised reward, madame. The girl is out of the way!"
"Dead!" whispered the woman, with an uncontrollable shudder.
"Yes, cowld and dead for hours, pore craythur!" answered the woman,
displaying at last a touch of natural feeling in something like remorse
over her hellish work.
"How?" demanded her mistress, hoarsely.
"By the poison, madame. It was all black on her lips, and spilt on the
bed-clothes, and the vial broken on the floor; but she got enough to
kill her stone dead."
"That is well. If she chose to die by suicide, we are not accountable,"
she said, heartlessly, though her frame shook as with an ague chill.
No amount of sophistry could make her believe herself guiltless of this
terrible deed.
"Will you come and look at the corp', madame? I want you to be satisfied
I'm telling the truth," continued the Irish woman, eagerly; and after a
moment of hesitation, Mrs. Ellsworth decided to go.
It was best to make sure of her cruel work.
In the twilight gloom they stole away, and threaded the dark, noisome
corridors of the ruined wing down to the underground passages, till they
reached the dark cell where poor Dainty's life had ebbed away in
untended illness and fever, till, crazed and delirious, she had ended
all with the tempting draught that promised oblivion of her sorrows in
welcome death.
It was a sight to make the angels weep with pity when Sheila flashed her
light in the gloomy place, and revealed to Mrs. Ellsworth's shrinking
eyes the pale, still form of the girl she had hated and wronged, lying
on the squalid couch, with her golden tresses veiling her wasted form
and framing the fair, dead face like sunshine; the blue eyes closed on
the world that had been so cruel to her; the pale lips stained with the
dark liquid she had drained in the madness of her desperation.
On the chair lay the broken remains of the bread she had been too ill to
swallow; but the bottles of water were quite empty, and perhaps they
could guess how she had drained them and wept for more in the terrible
feverish thirst of her last hours; but they spoke no word to each other
of this, only gazed and gazed with a sort of conscience-stricken awe on
the dead girl, until at last Mrs. Ellsworth stooped and placed her hand
on the white breast.
"Yes, she is gone, poor girl! Her heart is cold and still, her form
seems quite rigid; she must have been dead quite a long while," she
muttered, in a tone of relief.
In reality, it was but a few hours ago that Dainty had swallowed the
laudanum while just sinking into the stupor of a malignant fever; but to
all intents and purposes, in the garish light, she looked like a corpse
of ten hours' duration.
And now came an important question--how to dispose of the fair, dead
girl; for it would never do to leave her here, lest the body be
discovered in future, and the crime traced to the door of those who were
responsible for her death.
Sheila Kelly had a plan, and she quickly proposed it.
"Yer want iverybody to know she's dead, because if Mr. Ellsworth gets
well, he'll be searching for her till kingdom come, unless he knows the
truth."
"Yes, you are right; although there is not one chance in a hundred of
his recovery. He just lies with closed lips and eyes like a breathing
corpse," said Mrs. Ellsworth, impatiently.
"I was a-thinkin' this," said Sheila. "It's a dark night, and there'll
be no moon till midnight. I can carry her body in me arrums down to the
road, and lay her under the tree by the creek, with the bottle of
laudanum in her hand, and a little note, if ye choose to write it,
a-sayin' she is deserted by her lover, who refused to make her an honest
wife, so she chooses ter die. Then the coroner's 'quest will find the
poison in her stomach, and all is over, and no suspicion of our part in
her taking off."
"Capital, Sheila!" cried her mistress, approvingly, though she added: "I
hate the sensation that will follow the finding of the body; but it is
best, as you say, to let the world know she is dead; then, should
Lovelace survive, he can not doubt he is a widower, if he was ever
married. So you may carry out your plan, Sheila, and come to me at once
for your pay."
CHAPTER XXV.
AMONG STRANGERS.
The dark, calm, dewy night closed down presently, and Sheila Kelly
promptly finished her wicked work.
The reward was immediately paid into her hands, and she departed in
haste from Ellsworth to spend it in riotous living.
The night was warm and sultry, and few people strayed abroad; so out in
the road, on the grassy bank by a little purling creek, there lay for
hours the motionless form of a seemingly dead girl, by her side a bottle
of laudanum, and a pathetic little note detailing the reasons for her
suicide.
For awhile all was very still. The bending branches of the trees
stirred, and fanned the still, white face, the dew kissed it; the light,
airy wings of the summer insects brushed it in flying; the winds
caressed it with the sweet odors of clover and daisies, and the waters
murmured by with a soothing song, all alike unheeded by the beautiful,
silent sleeper.
"Softly!
She is lying with her lips apart;
Softly!
She is dying of a broken heart!
"Whisper!
She is going to her final rest;
Whisper!
Life is growing dim within her breast!"
Suddenly the sultry darkness was broken by a flash of lightning,
followed by a low rumble of thunder. Swift rain-drops flashed down
through the leaves upon that still, white face, and a summer storm broke
in startling fury on the heated earth, drenching the motionless form
with a steady downpour of water.
The wind howled through the trees, breaking and twisting branches,
tossing leaves about like feathers, and swelling the little creek to a
brawling stream.
All the while the blue sheets of lightning lighted up the sky with
splendor, and gleamed through the tossing tree-branches down on the
fair, quiet face seemingly locked in death's awful repose. For half an
hour the war of the elements raged, then ceased as suddenly as it had
begun, and the last faint gleam of lightning showed a startling change.
The lips of Dainty Chase were parted in long, gasping breaths; the blue
eyes were dilated in a blank and straining gaze. She rose slowly,
staggeringly, to her feet, and as the black clouds parted overhead, and
the full moon glimmered through, flooding the wet earth with splendor,
as though diamonds strewed every blade of grass, she stepped, slowly,
falteringly, down to the road, dragging her drenched body along
aimlessly toward the open country that lay beyond.
It would seem as if a miracle had been wrought, giving back life to the
dead.
But Dainty's draught of laudanum had been too small to induce death, and
the wholesome bath of rain and the electric elements abroad in the air
had combined to rouse her from a stupor that might otherwise have
terminated fatally. Life--feeble, and faltering, yet still life--stole
back along her veins to her numb heart, and set it beating again.
With a strength almost incredible after the terrible week she had
endured, she wandered slowly down the road, obeying blind impulse, not
reason; for her mind was yet clouded by delirium, and she had as yet no
realization of who she was or where she was.
Her mind was a pitiful blank, and her lips babbled vacant nothings as
she dragged herself on and on, further and further away from Ellsworth,
and into the lonely woods, unconsciously leaving the beaten track, and
pursuing a lonely bridle path that led her into the very heart of the
forest.
Now and then, when her strength failed, she would drop down and rest;
then start up and wander on again, aimlessly and drearily, until she
seemed to be lost in a maze of thick woodland that looked like the
haunts of savage creatures and crawling serpents, whose dens were fitly
chosen among these jagged gray rocks.
"And when on the earth she sank to sleep,
If slumber her eyelids knew,
She lay where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venomous tear, and nightly steep
The flesh in blistering dew,
And near her the she-wolf stirred the brake,
And the copper snake breathed in her ear."
She came staggering out at last from a great thicket of ferns and found
herself near a brawling mountain stream--one of those pellucid trout
streams dear to the disciples of gentle Isaak Walton. On its green,
sloping banks she sank down to rest, lulled by the low murmur of the
waters, and presently the gray shadows of dawn were pierced by the
sun's bright rays lighting the solitary wilderness with glory.
Higher and higher mounted the sun, and all the woodland dwellers started
abroad, while the mists of the night fled at the warmth of the advancing